Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc — Volume 2

4 All Ready to Condemn

ON TUESDAY, the 20th of February, while I sat at my master’s work in the evening, he came in, looking sad, and said it had been decided to begin the trial at eight o’clock the next morning, and I must get ready to assist him.

Of course I had been expecting such news every day for many days; but no matter, the shock of it almost took my breath away and set me trembling like a leaf. I suppose that without knowing it I had been half imagining that at the last moment something would happen, something that would stop this fatal trial; maybe that La Hire would burst in at the gates with his hellions at his back; maybe that God would have pity and stretch forth His mighty hand. But now — now there was no hope.

The trial was to begin in the chapel of the fortress and would be public. So I went sorrowing away and told Noel, so that he might be there early and secure a place. It would give him a chance to look again upon the face which we so revered and which was so precious to us. All the way, both going and coming, I plowed through chattering and rejoicing multitudes of English soldiery and English-hearted French citizens. There was no talk but of the coming event. Many times I heard the remark, accompanied by a pitiless laugh:

“The fat Bishop has got things as he wants them at last, and says he will lead the vile witch a merry dance and a short one.”

But here and there I glimpsed compassion and distress in a face, and it was not always a French one. English soldiers feared Joan, but they admired her for her great deeds and her unconquerable spirit.

In the morning Manchon and I went early, yet as we approached the vast fortress we found crowds of men already there and still others gathering. The chapel was already full and the way barred against further admissions of unofficial persons. We took our appointed places. Throned on high sat the president, Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, in his grand robes, and before him in rows sat his robed court — fifty distinguished ecclesiastics, men of high degree in the Church, of clear-cut intellectual faces, men of deep learning, veteran adepts in strategy and casuistry, practised setters of traps for ignorant minds and unwary feet. When I looked around upon this army of masters of legal fence, gathered here to find just one verdict and no other, and remembered that Joan must fight for her good name and her life single-handed against them, I asked myself what chance an ignorant poor country-girl of nineteen could have in such an unequal conflict; and my heart sank down low, very low. When I looked again at that obese president, puffing and wheezing there, his great belly distending and receding with each breath, and noted his three chins, fold above fold, and his knobby and knotty face, and his purple and splotchy complexion, and his repulsive cauliflower nose, and his cold and malignant eyes — a brute, every detail of him — my heart sank lower still. And when I noted that all were afraid of this man, and shrank and fidgeted in their seats when his eye smote theirs, my last poor ray of hope dissolved away and wholly disappeared.

There was one unoccupied seat in this place, and only one. It was over against the wall, in view of every one. It was a little wooden bench without a back, and it stood apart and solitary on a sort of dais. Tall men-at-arms in morion, breastplate, and steel gauntlets stood as stiff as their own halberds on each side of this dais, but no other creature was near by it. A pathetic little bench to me it was, for I knew whom it was for; and the sight of it carried my mind back to the great court at Poitiers, where Joan sat upon one like it and calmly fought her cunning fight with the astonished doctors of the Church and Parliament, and rose from it victorious and applauded by all, and went forth to fill the world with the glory of her name.

What a dainty little figure she was, and how gentle and innocent, how winning and beautiful in the fresh bloom of her seventeen years! Those were grand days. And so recent — for she was just nineteen now — and how much she had seen since, and what wonders she had accomplished!

But now — oh, all was changed now. She had been languishing in dungeons, away from light and air and the cheer of friendly faces, for nearly three-quarters of a year — she, born child of the sun, natural comrade of the birds and of all happy free creatures. She would be weary now, and worn with this long captivity, her forces impaired; despondent, perhaps, as knowing there was no hope. Yes, all was changed.

All this time there had been a muffled hum of conversation, and rustling of robes and scraping of feet on the floor, a combination of dull noises which filled all the place. Suddenly:

“Produce the accused!”

It made me catch my breath. My heart began to thump like a hammer. But there was silence now — silence absolute. All those noises ceased, and it was as if they had never been. Not a sound; the stillness grew oppressive; it was like a weight upon one. All faces were turned toward the door; and one could properly expect that, for most of the people there suddenly realized, no doubt, that they were about to see, in actual flesh and blood, what had been to them before only an embodied prodigy, a word, a phrase, a world-girdling Name.

The stillness continued. Then, far down the stone-paved corridors, one heard a vague slow sound approaching: clank... clink... clank — Joan of Arc, Deliverer of France, in chains!

My head swam; all things whirled and spun about me. Ah, I was realizing, too.

5 Fifty Experts Against a Novice

I GIVE you my honor now that I am not going to distort or discolor the facts of this miserable trial. No, I will give them to you honestly, detail by detail, just as Manchon and I set them down daily in the official record of the court, and just as one may read them in the printed histories.

There will be only this difference: that in talking familiarly with you, I shall use my right to comment upon the proceedings and explain them as I go along, so that you can understand them better; also, I shall throw in trifles which came under our eyes and have a certain interest for you and me, but were not important enough to go into the official record. (1) To take up my story now where I left off. We heard the clanking of Joan’s chains down the corridors; she was approaching.

Presently she appeared; a thrill swept the house, and one heard deep breaths drawn. Two guardsmen followed her at a short distance to the rear. Her head was bowed a little, and she moved slowly, she being weak and her irons heavy. She had on men’s attire — all black; a soft woolen stuff, intensely black, funereally black, not a speck of relieving color in it from her throat to the floor. A wide collar of this same black stuff lay in radiating folds upon her shoulders and breast; the sleeves of her doublet were full, down to the elbows, and tight thence to her manacled wrists; below the doublet, tight black hose down to the chains on her ankles.

Half-way to her bench she stopped, just where a wide shaft of light fell slanting from a window, and slowly lifted her face. Another thrill! — it was totally colorless, white as snow; a face of gleaming snow set in vivid contrast upon that slender statue of somber unmitigated black. It was smooth and pure and girlish, beautiful beyond belief, infinitely sad and sweet. But, dear, dear! when the challenge of those untamed eyes fell upon that judge, and the droop vanished from her form and it straightened up soldierly and noble, my heart leaped for joy; and I said, all is well, all is well — they have not broken her, they have not conquered her, she is Joan of Arc still! Yes, it was plain to me now that there was one spirit there which this dreaded judge could not quell nor make afraid.

She moved to her place and mounted the dais and seated herself upon her bench, gathering her chains into her lap and nestling her little white hands there. Then she waited in tranquil dignity, the only person there who seemed unmoved and unexcited. A bronzed and brawny English soldier, standing at martial ease in the front rank of the citizen spectators, did now most gallantly and respectfully put up his great hand and give her the military salute; and she, smiling friendly, put up hers and returned it; whereat there was a sympathetic little break of applause, which the judge sternly silence.

Now the memorable inquisition called in history the Great Trial began. Fifty experts against a novice, and no one to help the novice!

The judge summarized the circumstances of the case and the public reports and suspicions upon which it was based; then he required Joan to kneel and make oath that she would answer with exact truthfulness to all questions asked her.

Joan’s mind was not asleep. It suspected that dangerous possibilities might lie hidden under this apparently fair and reasonable demand. She answered with the simplicity which so often spoiled the enemy’s best-laid plans in the trial at Poitiers, and said:

“No; for I do not know what you are going to ask me; you might ask of me things which I would not tell you.”

This incensed the Court, and brought out a brisk flurry of angry exclamations. Joan was not disturbed. Cauchon raised his voice and began to speak in the midst of this noise, but he was so angry that he could hardly get his words out. He said:

“With the divine assistance of our Lord we require you to expedite these proceedings for the welfare of your conscience. Swear, with your hands upon the Gospels, that you will answer true to the questions which shall be asked you!” and he brought down his fat hand with a crash upon his official table.

Joan said, with composure:

“As concerning my father and mother, and the faith, and what things I have done since my coming into France, I will gladly answer; but as regards the revelations which I have received from God, my Voices have forbidden me to confide them to any save my King — ”

Here there was another angry outburst of threats and expletives, and much movement and confusion; so she had to stop, and wait for the noise to subside; then her waxen face flushed a little and she straightened up and fixed her eye on the judge, and finished her sentence in a voice that had the old ring to it:

— “and I will never reveal these things though you cut my head off!”

Well, maybe you know what a deliberative body of Frenchmen is like. The judge and half the court were on their feet in a moment, and all shaking their fists at the prisoner, and all storming and vituperating at once, so that you could hardly hear yourself think. They kept this up several minutes; and because Joan sat untroubled and indifferent they grew madder and noisier all the time. Once she said, with a fleeting trace of the old-time mischief in her eye and manner:

“Prithee, speak one at a time, fair lords, then I will answer all of you.”

At the end of three whole hours of furious debating over the oath, the situation had not changed a jot. The Bishop was still requiring an unmodified oath, Joan was refusing for the twentieth time to take any except the one which she had herself proposed. There was a physical change apparent, but it was confined to the court and judge; they were hoarse, droopy, exhausted by their long frenzy, and had a sort of haggard look in their faces, poor men, whereas Joan was still placid and reposeful and did not seem noticeably tired.

The noise quieted down; there was a waiting pause of some moments’ duration. Then the judge surrendered to the prisoner, and with bitterness in his voice told her to take the oath after her own fashion. Joan sunk at once to her knees; and as she laid her hands upon the Gospels, that big English soldier set free his mind:

“By God, if she were but English, she were not in this place another half a second!”

It was the soldier in him responding to the soldier in her. But what a stinging rebuke it was, what an arraignment of French character and French royalty! Would that he could have uttered just that one phrase in the hearing of Orleans! I know that that grateful city, that adoring city, would have risen to the last man and the last woman, and marched upon Rouen. Some speeches — speeches that shame a man and humble him — burn themselves into the memory and remain there. That one is burned into mine.

After Joan had made oath, Cauchon asked her her name, and where she was born, and some questions about her family; also what her age was. She answered these. Then he asked her how much education she had.

“I have learned from my mother the Pater Noster, the Ave Maria, and the Belief. All that I know was taught me by my mother.”

Questions of this unessential sort dribbled on for a considerable time. Everybody was tired out by now, except Joan. The tribunal prepared to rise. At this point Cauchon forbade Joan to try to escape from prison, upon pain of being held guilty of the crime of heresy — singular logic! She answered simply:

“I am not bound by this proposition. If I could escape I would not reproach myself, for I have given no promise, and I shall not.”

Then she complained of the burden of her chains, and asked that they might be removed, for she was strongly guarded in that dungeon and there was no need of them. But the Bishop refused, and reminded her that she had broken out of prison twice before. Joan of Arc was too proud to insist. She only said, as she rose to go with the guard:

“It is true, I have wanted to escape, and I do want to escape.” Then she added, in a way that would touch the pity of anybody, I think, “It is the right of every prisoner.”

And so she went from the place in the midst of an impressive stillness, which made the sharper and more distressful to me the clank of those pathetic chains.

What presence of mind she had! One could never surprise her out of it. She saw Noel and me there when she first took her seat on the bench, and we flushed to the forehead with excitement and emotion, but her face showed nothing, betrayed nothing. Her eyes sought us fifty times that day, but they passed on and there was never any ray of recognition in them. Another would have started upon seeing us, and then — why, then there could have been trouble for us, of course.

We walked slowly home together, each busy with his own grief and saying not a word.

(1) He kept his word. His account of the Great Trial will be found to be in strict and detailed accordance with the sworn facts of history. — TRANSLATOR.

6 The Maid Baffles Her Persecutors

THAT NIGHT Manchon told me that all through the day’s proceedings Cauchon had had some clerks concealed in the embrasure of a window who were to make a special report garbling Joan’s answers and twisting them from their right meaning. Ah, that was surely the cruelest man and the most shameless that has lived in this world. But his scheme failed. Those clerks had human hearts in them, and their base work revolted them, and they turned to and boldly made a straight report, whereupon Cauchon cursed them and ordered them out of his presence with a threat of drowning, which was his favorite and most frequent menace. The matter had gotten abroad and was making great and unpleasant talk, and Cauchon would not try to repeat this shabby game right away. It comforted me to hear that.

When we arrived at the citadel next morning, we found that a change had been made. The chapel had been found too small. The court had now removed to a noble chamber situated at the end of the great hall of the castle. The number of judges was increased to sixty-two — one ignorant girl against such odds, and none to help her.

The prisoner was brought in. She was as white as ever, but she was looking no whit worse than she looked when she had first appeared the day before. Isn’t it a strange thing? Yesterday she had sat five hours on that backless bench with her chains in her lap, baited, badgered, persecuted by that unholy crew, without even the refreshment of a cup of water — for she was never offered anything, and if I have made you know her by this time you will know without my telling you that she was not a person likely to ask favors of those people. And she had spent the night caged in her wintry dungeon with her chains upon her; yet here she was, as I say, collected, unworn, and ready for the conflict; yes, and the only person there who showed no signs of the wear and worry of yesterday. And her eyes — ah, you should have seen them and broken your hearts. Have you seen that veiled deep glow, that pathetic hurt dignity, that unsubdued and unsubduable spirit that burns and smolders in the eye of a caged eagle and makes you feel mean and shabby under the burden of its mute reproach? Her eyes were like that. How capable they were, and how wonderful! Yes, at all times and in all circumstances they could express as by print every shade of the wide range of her moods. In them were hidden floods of gay sunshine, the softest and peacefulest twilights, and devastating storms and lightnings. Not in this world have there been others that were comparable to them. Such is my opinion, and none that had the privilege to see them would say otherwise than this which I have said concerning them.

The seance began. And how did it begin, should you think? Exactly as it began before — with that same tedious thing which had been settled once, after so much wrangling. The Bishop opened thus:

“You are required now, to take the oath pure and simple, to answer truly all questions asked you.”

Joan replied placidly:

“I have made oath yesterday, my lord; let that suffice.”

The Bishop insisted and insisted, with rising temper; Joan but shook her head and remained silent. At last she said:

“I made oath yesterday; it is sufficient.” Then she sighed and said, “Of a truth, you do burden me too much.”

The Bishop still insisted, still commanded, but he could not move her. At last he gave it up and turned her over for the day’s inquest to an old hand at tricks and traps and deceptive plausibilities — Beaupere, a doctor of theology. Now notice the form of this sleek strategist’s first remark — flung out in an easy, offhand way that would have thrown any unwatchful person off his guard:

“Now, Joan, the matter is very simple; just speak up and frankly and truly answer the questions which I am going to ask you, as you have sworn to do.”

It was a failure. Joan was not asleep. She saw the artifice. She said:

“No. You could ask me things which I could not tell you — and would not.” Then, reflecting upon how profane and out of character it was for these ministers of God to be prying into matters which had proceeded from His hands under the awful seal of His secrecy, she added, with a warning note in her tone, “If you were well informed concerning me you would wish me out of your hands. I have done nothing but by revelation.”

Beaupere changed his attack, and began an approach from another quarter. He would slip upon her, you see, under cover of innocent and unimportant questions.

“Did you learn any trade at home?”

“Yes, to sew and to spin.” Then the invincible soldier, victor of Patay, conqueror of the lion Talbot, deliverer of Orleans, restorer of a king’s crown, commander-in-chief of a nation’s armies, straightened herself proudly up, gave her head a little toss, and said with naive complacency, “And when it comes to that, I am not afraid to be matched against any woman in Rouen!”

The crowd of spectators broke out with applause — which pleased Joan — and there was many a friendly and petting smile to be seen. But Cauchon stormed at the people and warned them to keep still and mind their manners.

Beaupere asked other questions. Then:

“Had you other occupations at home?”

“Yes. I helped my mother in the household work and went to the pastures with the sheep and the cattle.”

Her voice trembled a little, but one could hardly notice it. As for me, it brought those old enchanted days flooding back to me, and I could not see what I was writing for a little while.

Beaupere cautiously edged along up with other questions toward the forbidden ground, and finally repeated a question which she had refused to answer a little while back — as to whether she had received the Eucharist in those days at other festivals than that of Easter. Joan merely said:

“Passez outre.” Or, as one might say, “Pass on to matters which you are privileged to pry into.”

I heard a member of the court say to a neighbor:

“As a rule, witnesses are but dull creatures, and an easy prey — yes, and easily embarrassed, easily frightened — but truly one can neither scare this child nor find her dozing.”

Presently the house pricked up its ears and began to listen eagerly, for Beaupere began to touch upon Joan’s Voices, a matter of consuming interest and curiosity to everybody. His purpose was to trick her into heedless sayings that could indicate that the Voices had sometimes given her evil advice — hence that they had come from Satan, you see. To have dealing with the devil — well, that would send her to the stake in brief order, and that was the deliberate end and aim of this trial.

“When did you first hear these Voices?”

“I was thirteen when I first heard a Voice coming from God to help me to live well. I was frightened. It came at midday, in my father’s garden in the summer.”

“Had you been fasting?”

“Yes.”

“The day before?”

“No.”

“From what direction did it come?”

“From the right — from toward the church.”

“Did it come with a bright light?”

“Oh, indeed yes. It was brilliant. When I came into France I often heard the Voices very loud.”

“What did the Voice sound like?”

“It was a noble Voice, and I thought it was sent to me from God. The third time I heard it I recognized it as being an angel’s.”

“You could understand it?”

“Quite easily. It was always clear.”

“What advice did it give you as to the salvation of your soul?”

“It told me to live rightly, and be regular in attendance upon the services of the Church. And it told me that I must go to France.”

“In what species of form did the Voice appear?”

Joan looked suspiciously at he priest a moment, then said, tranquilly:

“As to that, I will not tell you.”

“Did the Voice seek you often?”

“Yes. Twice or three times a week, saying, ‘Leave your village and go to France.’”

“Did you father know about your departure?”

“No. The Voice said, ‘Go to France’; therefore I could not abide at home any longer.”

“What else did it say?”

“That I should raise the siege of Orleans.”

“Was that all?”

“No, I was to go to Vaucouleurs, and Robert de Baudricourt would give me soldiers to go with me to France; and I answered, saying that I was a poor girl who did not know how to ride, neither how to fight.”

Then she told how she was balked and interrupted at Vaucouleurs, but finally got her soldiers, and began her march.

“How were you dressed?”

The court of Poitiers had distinctly decided and decreed that as God had appointed her to do a man’s work, it was meet and no scandal to religion that she should dress as a man; but no matter, this court was ready to use any and all weapons against Joan, even broken and discredited ones, and much was going to be made of this one before this trial should end.

“I wore a man’s dress, also a sword which Robert de Baudricourt gave me, but no other weapon.”

“Who was it that advised you to wear the dress of a man?”

Joan was suspicious again. She would not answer.

The question was repeated.

She refused again.

“Answer. It is a command!”

“Passez outre,” was all she said.

So Beaupere gave up the matter for the present.

“What did Baudricourt say to you when you left?”

“He made them that were to go with me promise to take charge of me, and to me he said, ‘Go, and let happen what may!’” (Advienne que pourra!) After a good deal of questioning upon other matters she was asked again about her attire. She said it was necessary for her to dress as a man.

“Did your Voice advise it?”

Joan merely answered placidly:

“I believe my Voice gave me good advice.”

It was all that could be got out of her, so the questions wandered to other matters, and finally to her first meeting with the King at Chinon. She said she chose out the King, who was unknown to her, by the revelation of her Voices. All that happened at that time was gone over. Finally:

“Do you still hear those Voices?”

“They come to me every day.”

“What do you ask of them?”

“I have never asked of them any recompense but the salvation of my soul.”

“Did the Voice always urge you to follow the army?”

He is creeping upon her again. She answered:

“It required me to remain behind at St. Denis. I would have obeyed if I had been free, but I was helpless by my wound, and the knights carried me away by force.”

“When were you wounded?”

“I was wounded in the moat before Paris, in the assault.”

The next question reveals what Beaupere had been leading up to:

“Was it a feast-day?”

You see? The suggestion that a voice coming from God would hardly advise or permit the violation, by war and bloodshed, of a sacred day.

Joan was troubled a moment, then she answered yes, it was a feast-day.

“Now, then, tell the this: did you hold it right to make the attack on such a day?”

This was a shot which might make the first breach in a wall which had suffered no damage thus far. There was immediate silence in the court and intense expectancy noticeable all about. But Joan disappointed the house. She merely made a slight little motion with her hand, as when one brushes away a fly, and said with reposeful indifference:

“Passez outre.”

Smiles danced for a moment in some of the sternest faces there, and several men even laughed outright. The trap had been long and laboriously prepared; it fell, and was empty.

The court rose. It had sat for hours, and was cruelly fatigued. Most of the time had been taken up with apparently idle and purposeless inquiries about the Chinon events, the exiled Duke of Orleans, Joan’s first proclamation, and so on, but all this seemingly random stuff had really been sown thick with hidden traps. But Joan had fortunately escaped them all, some by the protecting luck which attends upon ignorance and innocence, some by happy accident, the others by force of her best and surest helper, the clear vision and lightning intuitions of her extraordinary mind.

Now, then, this daily baiting and badgering of this friendless girl, a captive in chains, was to continue a long, long time — dignified sport, a kennel of mastiffs and bloodhounds harassing a kitten! — and I may as well tell you, upon sworn testimony, what it was like from the first day to the last. When poor Joan had been in her grave a quarter of a century, the Pope called together that great court which was to re-examine her history, and whose just verdict cleared her illustrious name from every spot and stain, and laid upon the verdict and conduct of our Rouen tribunal the blight of its everlasting execrations. Manchon and several of the judges who had been members of our court were among the witnesses who appeared before that Tribunal of Rehabilitation. Recalling these miserable proceedings which I have been telling you about, Manchon testified thus: — here you have it, all in fair print in the unofficial history:

When Joan spoke of her apparitions she was interrupted at almost every word. They wearied her with long and multiplied interrogatories upon all sorts of things. Almost every day the interrogatories of the morning lasted three or four hours; then from these morning interrogatories they extracted the particularly difficult and subtle points, and these served as material for the afternoon interrogatories, which lasted two or three hours. Moment by moment they skipped from one subject to another; yet in spite of this she always responded with an astonishing wisdom and memory. She often corrected the judges, saying, “But I have already answered that once before — ask the recorder,” referring them to me.

And here is the testimony of one of Joan’s judges. Remember, these witnesses are not talking about two or three days, they are talking about a tedious long procession of days:

They asked her profound questions, but she extricated herself quite well. Sometimes the questioners changed suddenly and passed on to another subject to see if she would not contradict herself. They burdened her with long interrogatories of two or three hours, from which the judges themselves went forth fatigued. From the snares with which she was beset the expertest man in the world could not have extricated himself but with difficulty. She gave her responses with great prudence; indeed to such a degree that during three weeks I believed she was inspired.

Ah, had she a mind such as I have described? You see what these priests say under oath — picked men, men chosen for their places in that terrible court on account of their learning, their experience, their keen and practised intellects, and their strong bias against the prisoner. They make that poor country-girl out the match, and more than the match, of the sixty-two trained adepts. Isn’t it so? They from the University of Paris, she from the sheepfold and the cow-stable!